Sermon and Worship Resources

Synonyms: thirstiness, dryness, parched, craving, strong desire, longing, yearning, avidity, hunger, voracity, keenness, eagerness, lust, appetite, passion, love, crave, want, covet, desire, hunger for/after, lust for/after, hanker for/after, have one's heart set on

Antonyms: aversion, distaste, apathy, dislike, hatred, antipathy, disgust, disregard, abhorrence, acrimony, wet, animosity, animus, antagonism, bad feeling, bitterness, be averse to, detestation

Showing 3851 to 3875 of 5000 results

3851. A Time for Us

Ephesians 1:3-14

Sermon

Maurice A. Fetty

... know there is something within that is more than earth. The entire Bible speaks of hope superseding tragedy. Because of God's unending love, the cycle of dust to dust is broken. Because of the grace of Christ, the great numbers of us who really never find ... in the eternal life of God, which is a gift and not an achievement. We are destined, says Paul in Ephesians, to be full of love and eventually to be united with God in the ecstasy and joy, which are beyond time. As Robert Browning put it in his famous poem ...

3852. The Real Commandment

1 John 5:1-6

Bulletin Aid

Frank Ramirez

... and a light unto my path. (Psalm 119:105 KJV) Collect We love you, God, in spirit and truth. Your love lights our way. When we love one another we fulfill your commandment of peace. Let it be so. Amen. Amen. Prayer Of Confession We believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We believe that we are saved through his sacrifice of love. We believe that his commandments are easy and the burden is light. We love you, Heavenly Father. We love you Son of God. We love you Holy Spirit. Amen. Hymns Come, Now Is The Time To ...

3853. Heart, Soul, Mind, Spirit

Mark 12:28-34

Bulletin Aid

Frank Ramirez

... : Heart, soul, mind, strength.... All: God offers heart, soul, mind, and strength to us. In our worship we return the gift and seek to honor God in word, thought, prayer, and song. Amen. Prayer Of Confession God of heart, we pledge our love and the action of our love in your service, seeking to answer with compassion the needs of this world. God of soul, we look within to discover burning brightly the gift of your Spirit inspiring and directing our lives. God of mind, your logic confounds the wisdom of this ...

3854. Revitalizing the Lo-cal Church

Acts 1:12-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... poetic phrasings of R. S. Thomas: Prayers like gravel flung up at the sky's window, hoping to attract the loved one's attention. Experimenting with an Amen (London: Macmillan, 1986). Praying consists of four approaches to God. The mystic Guigo talked ... is necessarily less than God, we endanger God's coming to us by the mental shaping of the mind. Prayer is the soul's love for God. Prayer is not our asking for favors, or presenting God with some shopping list for the kingdom, or begging God and bargaining ...

3855. The Job Description of a Leader

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... the most studied and least understood topic in all the social sciences. In spite of all the recent studies on leadership by MacGregor Burns, Tom Peters, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Cary Cooper, Alistair Mant, et al., leadership is all too often still "like beauty, or love, we know it when we see it but cannot easily define or produce it on demand." Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1990), 133. Leaders are servants first of all. The only gospel passage in which Jesus summed ...

3856. Gutsy Joy

Nehemiah 8:1-4a, 5-6, 8-10

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... of humanity. We are not half-empty, but half-full. While it is true that we are flawed and fractured and thus may never be able to remain filled and satisfied for very long, we can nevertheless return again and again and again to the well of God's love and joy and draw from it all that we need to refill our strength of will and soundness of heart. While Nehemiah and Ezra proclaimed that the joy of the Lord is your strength, the New Testament promises an even more astounding new reality - that Jesus came so ...

3857. Terminator 3

Acts 9:1-20

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... -out. Saul, through his encounter with the living Christ on the road, spins 180 degrees in his life orientation. The bitter well of hatred from which he had been drawing his sustenance is sweetened by Christ's touch and changed into an eternal spring of love and dedication. Ananias' fear and loathing of his persecutor is also changed by Christ's words into openness and acceptance of a true "brother" in the faith. Simon Peter, filled with guilt and convinced of his failure, sees the face of the risen Christ ...

3858. Dr. God

Matthew 9:18-26

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... healer and one who desires healing. After feeling the touch of the hemorrhaging woman, Jesus turns and addresses her directly but with a profound gentleness. He offers her encouragement, "take heart," and opens his own heart to this woman by addressing her as "daughter." While love is not the cause of any healing that takes place, it is the only environment in which it can occur. Faith Heals: In today's gospel text, Matthew reworks the stories he shares with Mark and Luke in order to emphasize that faith in ...

3859. A-wake or A-live

Galatians 2:15-21

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... , there were situations arising that lay outside the scope of Jesus' earthly walk. The whole issue of the mission to the Gentiles is a prime example. Peter wanted to play it safe follow only in the known footprints of Jesus whom he knew as a circumcised, Torah-loving Jew, as well as his Savior and Messiah. Paul preached that it must be the spirit of the risen and regnant Lord within the heart that must now direct his steps and shape his attitudes. Peter had made the incarnate Jesus' footsteps a new law, and ...

3860. What Jesus Wants for Christmas (Part 2)

Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon

Leonard Sweet

... explains: Like everyone in his right mind, I feared Santa Claus, thinking he was God. I was still thoughtless and brutish, reactive. I knew right from wrong but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not from love. Santa Claus was an old man you never saw, but who, nevertheless, saw you.... He knew when you'd been bad or good. And I had been bad. Her mother called, pleading. Her father encouraged; her sister howled. But she would not come down.... Santa ...

3861. Back to the Real World

Luke 2:21-40

Sermon

King Duncan

... world much too early, but it is always too early. None of us knows what tomorrow may bring. But here’s the final thing to be said about this young family of Mary, Joseph and their first child Jesus: They were a family, and they sustained themselves with love and with faith in God. In the end it really didn’t matter what life sent their way. A birth in a stable, a flight to Egypt to escape persecution, the loss of Joseph, Jesus’ problems with the religious authorities and finally his death on the cross ...

3862. Acts 10:44-48

Acts 10:44-48

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... definitive shape. Obeying God's commandments, those ideals which reflect God's intentional will for all people, is the single best way to demonstrate our faith and love. Of course it is God's love for us which actually enables us to keep these commandments. Keeping God's commandments is not "burdensome" only because God's love makes it possible for us to do so. Thus even our most active attempts to honor God are in truth still dependent wholly upon God. Our faith is really a commentary on God's faithfulness ...

3863. John 17:20-26

John 17:20-26

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... Prayer is actually the Disciple's Prayer - the words Rabbi Jesus gave to his followers who yearned for some prayer of their own. But here in John 17 is Jesus' own prayer, prayed on the eve of his betrayal and death, prayed with all the hope and love and intensity and anguish of that moment in his life. This week's Gospel text focuses on the concluding sentences of this lengthy soliloquy. Having already prayed for himself, Jesus now prays for his disciples and for the church that is to come out of his death ...

3864. Luke 10:25-37

Luke 10:25-37

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... lived and breathed the great commandment would not need to ask such a question. The story of the Good Samaritan that follows does not, therefore, so much demonstrate who is the neighbor but rather answers the more genuine question, "How should I love my neighbor?" (See F. S. Spencer, "2 Chronicles 28:5-15 and the Parable of the Good Samaritan," Westminster Theological Journal 46 [1984], 342) The story of the Good Samaritan hardly needs retelling here. Much less familiar, however, is a much earlier story ...

3865. Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... seeking Christ. Obedience to that particular law is now a matter of indifference. What does matter, Paul declares, is "faith working through love" (v.6). But having identified freedom as Christ's gift to his followers, Paul now carefully defines just what kind of "freedom ... in the message he presents in verses 13 and 14. First, Paul emphasizes the power and priority of Christ's freedom and love over the letter of the law. Yet in the very next verse (14), he uses a popular encapsulation of the law itself ...

3866. Acts 10:44-48

Acts 10:44-48

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

3867. John 17:20-26

John 17:20-26

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

3868. Luke 10:25-37

Luke 10:25-37

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

3869. Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... thank the people who replaced her fraying pink sneakers with sturdy sandals. This church we have been imagining could be any church where the love of God embraces everyone. This is a church where the focus is not so much on lostness as it is on foundness. It is ... quite another for a toy to sneak off on its own and camouflage its location. We live in a world that has crawled away from a loving God and tried to the best of its ability to stay "lost." And like the father in the parable of the lost son, God has ...

3870. Luke 7:36-8:3

Luke 7:36-8:3

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... Jesus would in fact precede his forgiveness of her. But if the woman had already received Jesus' forgiveness, then the "hoti" of verse 47 "because [NRSV hence] she has shown great love" indicates the reason why Jesus can so confidently proclaim her forgiven state. This woman must be among the forgiven "because" she has indeed shown great love. Just as we never hear this woman's voice, we never hear Simon's response when Jesus applies his parable of the creditor and the debtors to the situation before them ...

3871. Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... Scripture. Deuteronomy is a moving covenant document that reminded Judah of her special relationship with God. While its words are spoken out of Moses' mouth, this book was probably written by a group of Levitical priests and reform-minded prophets. The Deuteronomic message of love and obedience to Yahweh and Yahweh alone came on the heels of a long period of Judaean rebellion and misconduct. During the reigns of Manasseh (687/642 B.C.) and his son Amon 642-640 B.C.), Judah had grown increasingly lax about ...

3872. John 11:1-45

John 11:1-45

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... locks onto Jesus' heart. First he is "greatly disturbed in spirit" (v.33). Actually moving towards Lazarus' tomb, Jesus joins Mary (and the Jews with her) in weeping over the tragedy of his death. At the sight of Jesus' tears, the crowd wonders at "how he loved him" (v.36). Some scholars have found in these tears Jesus' despair over a ubiquitous lack of faith. But there are no words of judgment or explanation - only tears. It seems to us that Jesus weeps over the power of death itself - the way it savages ...

3873. 1 Peter 1:17-23

1 Peter 1:17-23

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... itself. 1 Peter is writing a letter to new Christians about spiritual growth, not sending whole liturgies to worship communities. Verse 23 does, however, reflect a typical pattern in 1 Peter: a call to holiness that builds to a command for shared love among all believers. This demonstrates 1 Peter's concern for the future well-being of these Christian communities. Baptism does bring individuals into the community - as each confessor is "born anew" - but in order to embody the "living and enduring" qualities ...

3874. Ephesians 2:1-10

Ephesians 2:1-10

Sweet

Leonard Sweet

... . As Christ came in order to bring eternal life to fragile human beings, so this gift of God's grace also endures eternally. This discussion ends by clear statements of the theological tenets that have made such a situation a living reality. God's great love has become manifest in human life as divine grace. This grace is the one and only hope of our salvation. That human faith is required for this salvation to be activated, however, is yet another sign of God's tender dealings with willful humanity. God ...

3875. Rainbows and Roses

Genesis 9:1-17

Sermon

King Duncan

... . So it is with creation. When we look at the rainbow or the rose we see the nature of God. God is a God of love who colors our world with beauty. Rainbows follow storms. Rainbows remind us of the beauty of God’s world. But here’s what is most ... where He is there we may also be, you can look forward to it. If He says that nothing in all creation can separate us from His love for us, then relax. Life is all taken care of. Remember that the next time you see a rainbow. Not simply that God promised Noah He ...

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